“It doesn’t fit Grace, and not only the woman described by Tim Lewis, but the woman’s actions. She started her own illegal business, where it required discretion and care. She did it for some time without attracting a pimp, and then she eventually gave him the slip. She wasn’t an airhead.”
“That’s true.”
When I waited in silence, he continued. “I was talking to her father.”
“I’m surprised he would talk to you.”
“I didn’t give him much of a choice. When I went to his place, the housekeeper told me he’d gone hiking. He’s one of these idiots who climbs Camelback every day, even in the summer. So I got a description and waited at the Echo Canyon trailhead for him. Someday Phoenix Fire will have to airlift him off if he keeps this up. He was so heat exhausted that I didn’t have trouble getting him into the cab of the truck.”
“You shouldn’t have gone alone,” I said.
“Why?” He snapped it out in a harsh tone. “I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not my point. We’ve had two clients killed and the murderer is at large.”
“I’m not an old man, Mapstone. You handled the kidnapper’s call on your own. I did this. We don’t have an entire department backing us up any more. Sometimes we have to work separately to get results in a hurry. I sure as hell can take care of myself.”
I shut up. It was the first time I had sensed that he was not as philosophical about losing the election as he appeared. My concern about him going alone, and my frustration that he hadn’t been around to back me up, came off as questioning his abilities.
When he cooled down, Peralta described Grace’s father: a self-made man, owning a successful company in Chandler that sold garage-door mechanisms. In a metropolitan area where big garages were almost as sacred as unlimited gun rights and red-light running, it was a very good business. The daughter he described to Peralta was smart, a National Merit Scholar finalist, but a young woman with a rebellious side. Her father had wanted her to attend Stanford, so of course she had chosen San Diego State. In retaliation, he had made her pay her own way.
“They didn’t get along?” I asked.
“Didn’t sound like it,” he said. “The guy struck me as a prick. Chip on his shoulder. Sense of entitlement. And he’s got a wife half his age, so he’s desperately trying to stay in shape and be the extreme athlete, totally focused on trying to be her age. He’s had work done, I could tell.”
“She’s not Grace’s mother…”
“No. They divorced when Grace was a freshman in college and her mother found out dad had a girlfriend on the side that was his daughter’s age. He said Grace blamed him for the divorce, but the parents had been fighting for years. Grace couldn’t wait to get out of that house.”
“The dad told you all this?”
“No,” he said. “The housekeeper did. I don’t know whether she’s legal or not, but let’s say she was a fan. ‘My Sheriff,’ she called me. She was happy to help.”
“Where was the new wife?”
“Where else? The spa at the Sanctuary.”
After the divorce, Grace had come home to the Phoenix less often, and had visited her dad less still. She hated the young woman who, in her eyes, had broken up her parents’ marriage, and refused even to see her.
So her father was surprised and proud when Grace asked him for a loan to start her own business in San Diego. He was even happier when she paid him back.
“How did he seem to be taking her death?”
“Like a tough guy,” Peralta said, “but I could tell it’s eating at him.”
“Did he bring up Zisman?”
“No, but I did. He claimed he didn’t know Zisman. Grace never mentioned the guy to either parent.”
“Or what her real business was.”
“Right. But Grace had no known enemies and she was emotionally stable, even the housekeeper backed that up. She said Grace was the only nice person in the family. No history of suicide attempts. Later, I talked to her mother on the phone and it all jibed. The mother moved back to Iowa and hadn’t seen Grace for a year.”
“Do they think it was suicide?”
“They don’t know what to think. The dad wanted to know who hired us, and of course he had never heard of Felix Smith. They didn’t know about her boyfriend, either.”
“And they didn’t know they were grandparents?”
He shook his head.
Her mother last spoke to her on the phone the day before she died and Grace said she wanted to tell her some good news. She said it was a complicated story. But her mom was at work, so they decided to talk about it the next day. But the call never came.”
That made me even more suspicious: additional witnesses that Grace was not depressive, not suicidal. And a phone call promising good news: I assumed that meant telling her about her new baby. This was not a woman who killed herself.
“We have missing time to fill in,” I said. “On April twenty-second, Grace was gone when Tim returned at three that afternoon. She didn’t die until nearly midnight. None of that time was spent calling her mom in Iowa. So what was she doing?”
I also didn’t like the cell-phone situation. Someone Grace’s age couldn’t live without constant texting. And yet she had a new cell with nothing on it. I looked once more at my phone, willing Mister UNKNOWN to call again. He didn’t.
“San Diego PD will re-open this as a homicide based on your report,” Peralta said. “It will take time, but they can find her other phone records.”
“We don’t have time.” My temples were starting to ache from stress.
“Maybe I can help.” Lindsey was behind me.
I didn’t know how much she had heard. But I didn’t want her anywhere near a case that involved what would no doubt be a dead baby. Yet before I could speak, Peralta said, “That would be great, Lindsey.” To me, “Give her the flash drive with Grace’s clients. It’s encrypted.”
“I need to go to the Apple store at the Biltmore,” she said. “And a Radio Shack. Then I can get started.”
I handed her the keys to the Prelude.
22
By the time Lindsey returned, Peralta was gone. She set a large bag down on the desk where I was working.
“I want to see the garage apartment.”
I wasn’t sure that was a good idea for either of us. That had been Robin’s space, where she had lived with us after coming back into Lindsey’s life following a long absence, lived for two years rent-free after she lost her job as curator of a man’s art collection. He lost it all in the real-estate collapse and she was looking for her next adventure. I hadn’t been up there since her death.
“I want to see it,” Lindsey insisted.
I tried very hard not to sigh. We walked up the staircase, bookshelves on one side and a wrought-iron railing on the other, to the landing that overlooked the living room, then across the walkway above the interior courtyard where Lindsey’s garden had sat neglected. I fumbled with the keys and opened the door.
Heat greeted us so I turned on the window air-conditioner. It was a simple space, one large room with a bed and a couple of chairs, an alcove for a little kitchen, and a bathroom. A back door led to an outside staircase on the north end of the building. Grandmother had kept her sewing room up here when I was a child. Robin had added several social realism posters-her specialty in art history-and two of her own oil paintings, abstracts with geometric lines and vivid colors, illuminated by the afternoon sun. Her easel stood in one corner, an empty canvas on it.
Lindsey walked around, lightly touching the edges of the paintings. Opening the closet, she examined Robin’s clothes, holding a blouse up to her face.
Her dark hair grew fast and it was now down to her shoulders with bangs added. It fell thick and pin-straight. Women would kill for Lindsey’s hair. The edge of it brushed around the nape of her neck as she ran a hand against Robin’s clothes. They would kill for her fair skin and the lovely contrasts between dark hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. She looked familiar and yet a stranger. In so many ways, I did not know my wife.